News and Careers Advice

Learning how to engage millennials in the workplace has turned into an utmost priority for most business leaders. But what is found is that efforts to try and fight back these issues might not have come to fruition yet. At least that’s what is suggested by people’s online searches.

Perkbox and SEMrush joined forces to examine what work worries are keeping employees up at night according to online searches. The findings represent searches from 2015 to 2017 for the UK and the US.

Employees spend a lot of time at work counting down their days, hours and minutes before hometime. To be exact, in the UK ‘how many working days in a year?’ was searched just over 123 million times in 2017 and just over 276 million times in the US. It’s the most searched question by keyword ‘work’ of the last three years, for both regions.

But perhaps what’s most concerning is that searches for this term increased by over 14% year-on-year from 2016 to 2017 in the US and more than doubled that amount, 31%, in the UK. Employee engagement is clearly still not at its strongest.

Looking at search terms by keyword ‘boss’ also reflects some interesting findings. Mainly that we’ve lost a lot of respect towards our bosses in the last few years. We found two clear indicators of this based on two common questions asked online:

1. ‘How to impress your boss?’

The question ‘how to impress your boss?’ was searched 21,700 times in the UK in 2015. This has dropped by 15%, to 18,500 searches in 2017.

In the US, the same question has dropped by 33% over the same time period, which is comforting to know.

2. ‘How to prove your boss is bullying you’

In the UK, the question ‘how to prove your boss is bullying you’ increased from 1,200 searches in 2015 to 4,100 in 2016 and 33,500 in 2017. They have increased by a stunning 2691%, which is an incredible increase and worrying stat to know in terms of the relationships being built between bosses and their employees.

The US won’t make us feel better on this one sadly as searches are high but have at least decreased year-on-year between 2015 and 2017.

So what does this mean?

Good bosses are essential to any organization. But as the world of work continues to change, so will the qualities and characteristics of effective management. That’s what’s likely to be showing in these searches.

Today, employees are not looking to ‘impress’ their bosses in the same way as they used to twenty years ago. ‘Impressing’ in today’s world of work almost means ‘challenging’ your peers as opposed to taking them at their word.

As a result, bosses that are ‘caging’ their employees into strictly doing their day-to-day tasks and belittling them for their new suggestions because they’re too ‘inexperienced’ come across as bullies. Great bosses today must possess exceptional adaptability skills, and just want to build a relationship with their team based on trust, commitment, and engagement. That’s the environment where great ideas truly flourish.